A diamonds color or lack thereof, is a major component of the value of a diamond. Vivid, fancy color diamonds are very valuable and rare to find, making them all the more out of reach of the wallets of the everyday person. This is why the jewelry industry took technology and used it to create amazing, colorful diamonds that the public demands.
Irradiation is just one of the ways to turn a brown or yellow stone into fancy colored diamonds, such as brilliant greens, vibrant reds, glowing yellows, as well as purples, blues, and a list of other colors. The process of irradiation is simple due to new technology. They take a natural stone and infuse it with high electron particles in a laboratory. This process tries to mimic a diamonds creation in nature, but also use heat to give them the same brilliance they would find in a natural state. The electron or neutron would produce a narrow space, and when they are heated the nitrogen traps the narrow spaces to form a more complex color. The colored centers absorb certain colors reflecting back to us the unabsorbed colors creating the stunning effect. Red is by far the rarest, as the color is very difficult to achieve, such as in authentic colored diamonds. The colors are then treated to keep the 100% safe for us to wear.
Natural colored diamonds are only available at about a rate of 1 to 2 carats per every 1000 carats so chances are if you find one at your local jeweler it is a color enhanced diamond. The rare authentic colored diamonds are often museum showpieces, or held only by the rich and famous.
Clarity is considered one of the most important of the 4 C’s when looking for a diamond. Clarity is often enhanced, which is something you may not know even after you have purchased the diamond of your dreams.
There is a technique called fracture filling that has recently become popular, even though it originally was started in 1982 by Mr. Zvi Yehuda of Israel. It is a process that melts a crystal like substance into the cracks and fractures of a diamond that is unlikely to be of any value. It can also be filled with a type of molten glass made special by Yehuda, but no one can tell for sure, as the techniques are relatively unknown. We do know that it uses varying degrees of heat, and slowly fills in every crack on the surface possibly using a vacuum method to keep the stone from breaking completely from the heat. The stone is then cooled down and polished to remove any excess filling.
To an untrained eye, it is completely unnoticeable and often is only found under a microscope. There are some subtle ways in which you can tell if you have a clarity enhanced diamond, such as the flash effect, cloudy surfaces, gas bubbles in the diamond, as well as a cracked texture.
To make sure that your diamond is not fracture filled, you should ask for a written statement from your jeweler regarding any clarity enhancement techniques it may have used and any lab certificates it has.
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